tonight we're gonna business plan like it's 1999

I met an entrepreneur this weekend at Superhappydevhouse who reminded me why we all loved Suck, back in the day. (Well, all of us except Marc Canter, anyway.)

I spent a couple hours listening to this man, whose company I will not disclose, talk about how great his company is. However, rather than speak in terms of the humanitarian element which Paul Holland of Foundation Capital claims is part of every successful startup, he was not able to enunciate what was special about his company. It was like watching a train wreck -- all he could talk about was about impressing VC's and how hard it is to obtain capital. Not surprisingly, he'd been told that he needed a stronger message. He interpreted this to mean -- not that he needed to develop a compelling vision for his product, or a story which explained why his product is useful and worthy of investment -- but that he needed to develop a better motto than the Stalinist quote on the home page. Pithy though it is, it says nothing about what business he's in, or what he has to offer a customer. And maybe a better name -- something cool.

So I listened to him brainstorming different Stalinist quotes with his business partner, including such lovelies as, "Death solves all problems - no man, no problem." Stalin really was a marketing genius. While they weren't putting this quotation to serious consideration, never did it occur to them that their message should be actually related to the value they hope to provide, and the customer need they hope to fill. Later, they got bored with that exercise, and moved on to finding a new name. Alex Russell had just done a presentation on the Dojo Toolkit, so they excitedly decided that they needed to name their product "Dojo." That way the CEO could call himself "Sensei" on his business card.

I wish I could say that these people were intoxicated, or just having fun, but unfortunately they were serious. Fortunately, the Dojo Toolkit doesn't need to worry about brand confusion, as there is no chance these folks are getting off the ground. What's needed is not personal ambition, but ambition for the company.

Jim Collins quotes David Packard on this topic:

“I want to discuss why a company exists in the first place. In other words, why are we here? I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists simply to make money. While this is an important result of a company’s existence, we have to go deeper and find the real reasons for our being. As we investigate this, we inevitably come to the conclusion that a group of people get together and exist as an institution that we call a company so they are able to accomplish something collectively that they could not accomplish separately—they make a contribution to society, a phrase that sounds trite but is fundamental.
… You can look around [in the general business world] and still see people who are interested in money and nothing else, but the underlying drives come largely from a desire to do something else—to make a product—to give a service—generally to do something that is of value.”